What is broken on this site

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Apparently you do have 11 karma, though?

Yes. After someone replied to the post I linked above I was bumped to 11 karma and was able to submit the answer to the original question I wanted to answer. I realize this is not a problem for me now, but it is a hindrance to new users.

The best way to deal with spam is delete the messages and mark user accounts as blocked, but not delete the accounts, that way owner of the corresponding email address will not be able to use that account. If the accounts are deleted - he can create another with the same email address and continue.

How does one block users accounts as blocked? Is there a Karma requirement?

There is no karma way to do it, only admins or moderators can block accounts.

Oh, forgot to mention - do flag offensive messages, they will go away after 3 flags accumulate. The required number of flags is adjustable.

Yep I flagged him three times. I guess that made him go away.

indeed, the same happened to me too. If anyone does look into this, I wish they would fix the email subjects too, which currently have "[ASK.SAGEMATH] [ASK.SAGEMATH]" prepended. I think one [ASK.SAGEMATH] would suffice.

Same thing here. I tried every possible configuration, including "no email at all", but still keep receiving emails for avery update.

@pang the email tag filter is also broken, so if you set it to anything but "off", you will stop receiving any email at all.

I see a bunch of your comments there... it's true that sometimes the comments are folded up so that they aren't easily visible.

good question -- I remember @DSM's answer looking particularly good (as usual).

The only reasonable explanation would be that he deleted his own answer... Maybe he will tell you better.

I can't get email to work now either.

Well, it appears to me that right now you are subscribed to "instant" updates on all categories - please take a look at your profile. There was a bug where a stale set of receivers was used to send updates and that was fixed a while ago, including on this site.

Hmm, sorry for the multiple commenting, now I've looked at my own subscription settings (at this point I only subscribe to instant updates on the individually selected questions) and the emails I receive, and it does look like I do get more email than I should... There must be another bug. Thanks for the heads up.

> Well, it appears to me that right now you are subscribed to "instant" updates on all categories - please take a look at your profile. Yes, but I tried to turn them off and on before posting this. And finally decided to turn on the options I would like to use and just wait until the bug is fixed.

I think I've really fixed this now, at least found one place where extra emails would slip through, please give it a try. This feature so far was the hardest to test exhaustively. Please let me know if you still get unexpected messages. Thanks.

That's right, it is not a bug actually. The argument is actually saved in your search state, which is maintained in the session. Speaking in the technical terms the search feature is not RESTful, which means that the url is not the storage of the state here.

I've updated my 'answer', with info why it doesn't work as a session var as well. And I wonder why scope is in the url if it's actually stored in session. And why use a session var in this case?

What is odd is that if I copy-paste the the first two urls you gave into the new browser window, everything works just fine. The same happens if I click "unanswered" and then "page 2". Maybe somehow whatever is in your search state became inconsistent. Try deleting the cookie - will that help? Did you modify the url manually? Perhaps it is better to use stateless approach and keep everything in the url, but it will take some work. Search state includes: text query, scope, sort order, page number, tag selection and user (the latter is not yet easily accessible). For all that to work in the url, the parameters need to be appended to every relevant link in the main page and updated in any ajax calls, but maybe I'll just get it done. In addition there are ignored tags, stored separately.

the question is whether it is worth making search restful or it will be better to just fix the state storage. BTW - feel free to fork askbot on github and improve something.

I tried repeating the steps in IE (my clean browser since I never use it) and it was repeatable. I.e. clicking unanswered and then page two lost the search state. I also tried copy pasting the link in IE and it worked after that! That's kind of wierd :)